Third-culture Huàllywood: or, ‘Chimerica’ the cinematic return

ABSTRACT

Recognising that ‘Chinese cinema(s)’ have spearheaded calls for a ‘critical transnationalism’ I here take the recent neologism Huallywood on its word—but not its tone—to posit an alternative ‘third culture’ “Hàullywood” (from huà (化) drawing in associations with change and transformation) model that helps us understand the making and marketing of mega-budget and mega-revenue transborder films produced in-between what we might call global Hollywood and transnational Huallywood. Seeing Huallywood as a multi-faceted assemblage, I also harnesses the mythical figure of the chimera as a conceptual guide, which in turn becomes articulated to discussion of a cinematic ‘return’ of the economic behemoth that the historian Niall Ferguson’s and economist Moritz Schularick christened Chimerica. Films such as The Great Wall, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story serve as illustrative examples of what a Chimerican or Hàullywood cinema looks like today: this being neither Hollywood or Huallywood, but rather composed of bits and pieces of each. By building its critical arguments through a consideration of news texts and cinematic paratexts, this essay also highlights the importance of studying extra-cinematic media commonly threatened by problems of ‘paratextual ephemerality’; which all the same play an important role in producing cinematic discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Huallywood
• critical transnationalism
• third culture
• ephemeral media
• The Great Wall
• Star Wars

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Qi Gao and Thomas Whyke, whose work on Chimerica and Chinese shape-shifters indubitably helped inspire and shape this project during its early gestation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I’m here indebted to David Leiwei Li who highlighted the value of Comarfoff and Comaroff’s models for approaching Chinese cinemas (2016a, 211–17).

2. Ferguson and Schularick note that conflating the names of these nations has the added bonus of recalling this mythical creature.

3. This being tantamount to an agential trans-border assemblage composed of the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Berry elsewhere argues that outside of the politics of ‘methodological nationalism,’ these three Chinese territories have reached ‘a point where the ability to draw simple lines between them or talk about co-productions between otherwise distinct territories is no longer appropriate’ (2014, 458). And while student protests in Hong Kong point to an on-going geopolitical tension and struggle with PRC, economically speaking, the ever-evolving parliament of cinematic production, distribution, and consumption constitutes an assemblage: a ‘contingent ensemble of diverse practices’ that form into a heterogeneous totality, which thrives on ‘relations of exteriority’ (Berry 2014, 468).

4. Fu et al point to Shao’s use of hua referring to people living in China, Hong Kong, Macau as well as Chinese migrants and their descendants living anywhere in the world (2016, 56). Thus, the all-encompassing nature of this prefix does not exclusively apply to the latest Hollywood-Chinese cinematic productions from Wuxi Park, but encompasses an extensive range of films that include 1) Huaren (ethnic Chinese people) 2) Huayu (Chinese languages) 3) Huashì (affairs concerning Chinese people or China) 4) Huashǐ (Chinese history) and 5) Huadi (locations including Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Chinese communities living outside China) (55).

5. Following such a model, while the character of China might not play a role in an American newspaper on the morning after a mass shooting, say, the very ‘novelistic format of the newspaper,’ Anderson reminds us, assures its readership ‘that somewhere out there the “character” [of China] moves along quietly, awaiting its next appearance in the plot’ (2006, 33).

6. This commenter is presumably unaware of Lucas selling the franchise to Disney.

7. Wang argues the success of this Hollywood hybrid saw Kung Fu Panda’s ‘return’ to its so-called ‘originary’ country and generating feelings of ‘awe, wow and shame’ (172). The latter perhaps made manifest in the sentiments of Kong Qingdong, who warned his Chinese readership: ‘Hollywood robs Chinese symbols and uses your own symbols to conquer you … Hollywood not only makes money out of you, it also intends to brainwash you and conquer your heart’ (quoted in Su 2016).

8. Homewood uses Transformers 4’s scripted praise of the Chinese government as an emblematic case in point, which he reads as ‘a naked moment of pro-Beijing propaganda’ (2018, 181).

9. Born in Guanzhou in 1963, Yen moved to Hong Kong and then the US, before becoming a Hong Kong action hero, and one of Asia’s most popular leading men. Although his filmography begun with Shaolin Drunkard in 1983, he became internationally famous for his portrayal of Ip Man (the grandmaster of the martial art Wing Chun), in two instalments in of the transborder trilogy: Ip Man (2008) – set in Foshan during the Sino-Japanese war but filmed in Shanghai – and Ip Man 2 (2010) – set in Hong Kong under British colonial rule and also filmed in Shanghai.

10. It is noteworthy that within the film Yen and Wen both speak in English, and would thus require subtitling within China. Some Western press hint that the English script was more of a challenge for Wen because of his ‘spotty English’ (Britt 2017) – which apparently accounted for his absence from much Western promotional material. In one recorded interview with People, however, Wen communes in flowing English, speaking about never having seen a Star Wars film because of Cold War politics and Chinese policy. In comparison, very little Chinese dialogue or releases were required of the Hollywood stars of The Great Wall.

11. Costing 135 million dollars to produce, at the time of writing the Great Wall remains the most expensive film produced in mainland China. The transnational financing is essentially Chimerican in nature though, with contributions from the USA, China and Hong Kong making up the main, with Australia and Canadian funds constituting the remainder (imdb.com). The Chimerican casting saw the title roles being fleshed out by Matt Damon, Tian Jing, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau, Pedro Pascal, Hayyu Zhang, and as already indicated, Lu Han.

12. Hollywood productions were at this time encountering a negative backlash on account of casting Tilda Swinton as the ancient Tibetan guru in Dr Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2016), Finn Jones in Iron Fist (Scott Buck, 2017), and Scarlett Johansson as the lead in the 2017 live-action remake of the Japanese anime Kôkaku Kidôtai/Ghost in the Shell (1995, 2017) (see Shepherd 2016; Whitney 2016).

13. Earlier in the film, the potential for a ‘traditional’ hetero-normative romantic coupling between the Hollywood (Caucasian male) and Huallywood (Asian female) stars is dissipated when Tian Jing’s Commander discovers that unlike herself – who is only ‘loyal to one flag’ (her historical Hua-idenity) – Damon’s mercenary figure will happily fight for the highest bidder. It is in her assertion that ‘we are different’ that we perhaps uncover a significant Huállywood feature of the film.

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Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

David H. Fleming

David H. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer in the Communication, Media and Culture division at the University of Stirling, Scotland. His research interests surround the intersectionalities of cinema, philosophy and technology. He is the author of Unbecoming Cinema (Intellect/Chicago University Press, 2017), and co-author of Kinoteuthis Infernalis, or Squid Cinema from Hell with William Brown (forthcoming Edinburgh University Press), and Chinese Urban Shi-nema with Simon Harrison (forthcoming Palgrave MacMillan). He has also published widely in interdisciplinary journals including SubStance, Film-Philosophy, Deleuze Studies, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Social Semiotics and edited collections such as Posthumanisms Through Deleuze (Indiana University Press, forthcoming) and Deleuze and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2012).